Growth System
Ironside Nutrition
Performance nutrition ads rebuilt from the hook up — 4.1× ROAS in 60 days.
Ironside Nutrition had strong products, a loyal customer base from gym-channel sales, and ambitions to scale DTC — but Meta ad campaigns that had never cracked a 1.5× ROAS despite months of effort.
A creative audit revealed the core problem: every ad looked like a supplement ad. Generic gym photography, ingredient callout badges, and discount-led CTAs that trained their audience to wait for a sale.
We rebuilt their creative strategy around athlete-focused narrative content, developed a systematic testing framework across 24 creative variants, and redesigned their post-click funnel to match the creative's promise.
ROAS reached 4.1× within 60 days. Subscription attach rate on new customer orders grew to 44 %. Creative fatigue — previously a monthly crisis — became a managed, predictable process.
Key Services
- Ad creatives (Meta + TikTok)
- Creative testing matrix
- Funnel design & build
- Landing page optimisation
- Performance analytics
Platform
- Meta Ads
- TikTok Ads
- Shopify
- Klaviyo
- Triple Whale
Before
Ads That Looked Like Every Other Supplement Brand
Black background, shaker bottle, ingredient callout graphic, 20 % off discount code. Ironside's ads were indistinguishable from fifty competitors running the same template. Audiences were scroll-blind to the creative. CTR sat at 0.6 % — half the industry average — despite healthy spend.
Discount-Led CTAs That Eroded Margin and Brand Value
Every ad led with a promotional offer. New customers arrived expecting a deal and waiting for the next one rather than buying at full price. Repeat purchase rate was low, subscription attach was negligible, and contribution margin on ad-acquired customers barely covered the cost of the sale.
Creative Fatigue That Paralysed the Account Every Six Weeks
With no testing framework and no creative pipeline, every time performance dropped the team scrambled to produce new ads from scratch. The account would go dark for 10–14 days while new creative was built. Each restart burned budget re-entering the learning phase.
After
Athlete Narrative Creative That Earns Attention Instead of Buying It
We built a creative strategy around real athlete stories — ordinary people with specific training goals — and developed a content format that felt native to each platform. 15-second TikTok training reels, 'day in the life' Meta story sequences, and long-form testimonial videos gave audiences a reason to watch before they had a reason to buy. Average CTR across new creative: 2.9 %.
A Value-Led CTA Strategy That Builds Customers, Not Coupon Hunters
We shifted CTAs from discount-led to outcome-led: 'Build your base in 30 days', 'See what 8 weeks looks like', 'Start your first cycle'. Subscription was positioned as the default choice for committed athletes — not a cost-saving tactic. New customer subscription rate grew from 8 % to 44 % in 60 days.
A 30-Asset Creative Pipeline That Never Goes Dark
We built a rolling creative calendar: 24 variants across four testing layers launched in month one, with eight new assets entering testing every two weeks based on the previous cycle's learnings. The account has not had a dark period since the system launched. Performance compounds rather than resets.
“We'd been copying what the big supplement brands do with ads. Pixelain showed us why that was our biggest mistake — and built us a creative system that actually works for our size and our audience.”
Nathan Brooks
Founder & CEO, Ironside Nutrition
